The Night Before
by melissaeverdeen13
Summary: A look inside what happened the night before Jackson and April got married; what you didn't see in 12x11 after April pulled Jackson into the motel room.


**Hey guys! You know it's hard for me to stay away from writing Japril these days...I just keep getting new ideas! Just a disclaimer: in the very beginning of this until she pulls him inside the room - dialogue belongs to Shonda Rhimes and none of it is mine! After that, though, the story is an original idea while the characters are obviously not mine. I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to leave reviews, it makes me want to keep writing!**

In the yellow-lit parking lot of the motel, Jackson and I walk with matching strides with me holding onto one of his arms with both of mine. "I know you think it's silly…" I begin.

"Well, I didn't say that…" he claims.

"But I'm serious, okay? No premarital sex."

We stop walking and he turns to face me, looking down with the look on his face that I've found is reserved only for me. It's softer, and it makes me feel special that he doesn't look at anything - or anyone - else quite like this. "How serious? Like, absolutely not, serious? Or you can be...convinced, serious?"

He dips his head down and starts kissing my jaw, then lower to my neck. I can't help but smile as my eyes drift upwards to look at the sky full of sparkling stars. I don't want to stop him but I know I should, even though the way his lips feel on my neck is close to otherworldly. It makes my knees weak and heat pool in between my legs, which then makes me blush.

I wrap my arms around him and drag my fingers over the base of his neck. "We will survive one more night," I say, my voice rising in pitch at the end.

He pulls away from me, leaning his head back and speaking quietly. "Speak for yourself."

"If we wait," I say, my hands on his chest with our faces only inches apart.

His arms are wrapped around my waist; there's no way I'm going anywhere anytime soon. "Mm-hmm…"

I move my head closer to his when I say, "Our wedding night will be so amazing." I run my hands down the backs of his arms and draw him closer to me.

He looks down at me with hooded eyes. "Tonight could also be _so amazing_ ," he copies, and cuts off my giggling by pressing his lips to mine.

When we start kissing, of course I don't want to stop. And I know he knows that. I wrap my arms tight around his neck to get even closer to him, and he bends slightly down so he's more at my level. "Okay," I say, my mouth against his.

"Mm-hmm," he says,

"Okay," I say again, trying halfheartedly to end this.

"Mm-hmm."

"Mm-hmm." I finally pull away from him after my having his face in my hands, and with much difficulty, smack my grip down on his shoulders. "You…"

"What's that?"

I let out a sigh. "Good night, Jackson."

He groans and sets his jaw, rolling his eyes. Then he lifts his arm and holds out the key ring for my room - separate from his - on his pointer finger. I take it from him quickly, enclose it in my palm, and then peck him chastely on the lips before hurrying off towards my room with a laugh.

I walk up the stairs, unlock the door, and throw one last glance back at him. "I'm gonna...go now," I say, smiling stupidly down at the ground. He waves at me and I wave back. I take the key out of the lock, shut the door, and even pull the chain.

I'm still waiting by the door only moments later when I hear three knocks. I open it instantly and see Jackson standing there, but I don't give him a chance to speak before I do. "Good _night_ , Jackson," I repeat.

He widens his eyes. "You put the chain on?"

"I'll see you in the morning."

He groans, smiling with his teeth gritted together. We have a lasting look at each other, and then I shut the door again. I give it a few seconds; a few seconds where I'm just staring at the meticulously-painted wood inches from my eyes, before I open the door again after undoing the chain.

He spins around on his heel and asks me, "Forget something?"

I don't give myself time to change my mind, even though at this point I know I'm not going to. I grab him by the tie and pull him inside, hardly getting the door closed before our lips are pressed together with one of my arms around his neck, keeping him close to me.

Once the door closes, I reach over Jackson's shoulder and pull the chain just as I had moments before. I feel him smile against my lips as his arms entwine around my waist, lower and lower until he can grab hold of my butt and squeeze it. That makes me let out a high-pitched whimper into his mouth, which only encourages him to do it again.

"I need out of this," I say, pulling apart from him only to struggle with my wedding dress. I contort my arms behind my back to try and unzip it myself, but he gently spins me around to help.

"Someone's in a rush," he says slyly.

"No," I say quickly. "Well, yes, and… it's just reminding me of…" I wave my hand in a circular motion above my head. "Everything. And it's not exactly comfortable."

I hear the zipper come down all the way to the small of my back, and then feel the draft that follows. Jackson pushes the material off of my shoulders and I kick off my white pumps and am left standing in front of him in just a white strapless bra and silk white underwear.

And I don't feel one bit self-conscious.

His eyes drift up and down my entire body, taking in the sight of me. It only lasts for a couple seconds, but to me it feels like an eternity that he spends letting his eyes wash over me. But once the moment is over, he goes for his tie and loosens it until it comes off, then throw it on the dresser behind him.

"While you get undressed," I say, slinking off towards the bathroom. "I'm gonna go start the shower."

His hands pause where they're poised at his chest, undoing the buttons. He tips his head to the side, confused. "We're not…?"

I lean against the wall, batting my eyelashes at him. "If you'd like to join me, I think we both need to wash off that road trip."

Realization flits across his eyes as he finishes with the buttons on his shirt, then he walks to the bathroom in just his dress pants after leaving his shoes by the door. When he comes in, the bathroom is already foggy since I just left the door open a crack, and I haven't bothered with taking anything off just yet.

"I figured you'd want to," I say, and run my hands along his belt from the back to the front until I get to the buckle. I undo it slowly then make my way to the button and zipper of his pants while keeping eye contact with him. I can already feel how strained he is through the fabric of his pants, and it's not a mistake when I brush my fingers over the bulge just under his black underwear.

He presses his lips tight together and kicks his way out of the legs of his pants. As the bathroom gets steamier and steamier, he slips his arms around my bare back and undoes the clasp of my bra with expert ease, and it falls between our bodies immediately with no straps to keep it on my shoulders.

He kisses a path from my jaw down my neck, to the curve of my shoulder. I wrap my arms around his strong shoulders and hold the back of his head, closing my eyes to concentrate solely on the way his plush lips feel on my dewy skin. With his mouth on my pulse point, he slides his hands down my ribcage, then lower to my hips where he dips his fingers just inside the waistband of my underwear.

"You decided against the pearl ones your sisters got you?" he asks, his voice giving me shivers as his breath is hot against my ear. He nudges my temple with his nose before smiling and kissing me there, because I know he can see me blush.

"How did know find out about those?" I ask, stepping out of the underwear that he's pushed down my hips.

He kisses me, but pulls his lips away from mine to answer, "Things get around at the hospital."

I roll my eyes and feel my eyelashes flutter against his skin. "Typical," I say, and then turn around so I can pull open the glass shower door. I test the water with one hand and then step inside, pulling him in by his wrist once his underwear are off and in a little pile on the tile floor.

The shower isn't big by any means, but space is the last thing on my mind as we stand in here together. Miraculously, we both fit under the jet stream of water, and because of this we stand there wrapped up in each other, letting the water wash us clean. He kisses me after a few moments pass and then pushes me up against the wall of the shower with his hands braced on the tile on either sides of my head.

I run my hands down his muscular chest and let my fingers linger on his pecs as he takes my bottom lip between his teeth. From there, he moves his mouth down to my collarbone and then ghosts his thumbs over my nipples, which makes the back of my head hit the shower wall and my eyelids flutter shut. He holds firm at my waist and all I want to do is somehow be closer to him, so I grapple to hold on tight to his shoulders as he presses my back up against the tile.

He lifts me up and hitches my legs around his waist, and I can feel how ready he is. I want this to happen, but even as I'm holding onto his neck for dear life, I can feel myself slipping down.

"I'm slipping," I murmur, my lips moving against his as he shifts his pelvis.

"Hmm?"

"Slipping!" I shriek, and then clamber to replant both of my feet on the floor so I don't slide down the wall. "I almost totally wiped out," I say, grinning widely.

He chuckles, pulling me closer by my waist. As he kisses my neck, he says, "Maybe shower sex isn't the best idea."

"Probably," I say, then reach up to grab a complimentary loofah. "But it was a valid thought."

He takes the loofah from me and squirts some cream-colored body wash onto it, lathering it up between his hands before soaping up my shoulders with it. "It definitely was," he agrees, handing it over so he can have his turn. I take my time scrubbing him; letting my eyes pass over the V at his hips, the definition of his chest, and the veins in his arms.

I lean my back against his chest as he shampoos my hair; it's so easy to close my eyes and get lost in the feeling of his strong fingers scraping my scalp. He spends a lot of time with it, so much so that I start to get curious as to what he's up to.

"What're you doing?" I ask, opening my eyes.

"Look at me," he says, and when I spin around he laughs. "Right now, you have a mohawk that I'm very jealous of."

I reach up and feel the points of my hair that he created with shampoo and smack him playfully on the chest. "This is so 2005," I say. "You just wish you had enough hair."

"You're right, I do," he says, smoothing down my hairstyle under the water jet to rinse the shampoo out. "Luckily, you're gonna be around forever so I can do that whenever I want to."

"That might be a stretch," I say.

"What, forever?" he asks, now finger-combing my hair to work the conditioner in.

"No, silly," I say, shaking my head. "The other part. You're an amazing surgeon, but you should never take up hairdressing."

"Dream killed," he says, and I open my eyes to look directly into his. I rub my nose against his and circle my arms around his waist. "What?" he asks.

"I love you," I say. "I'm standing here in front of you, naked, my hair all slicked down with conditioner, in a hotel shower in the middle of nowhere and...I love you."

He kisses me long and sweet, which is all the response I need.

When we get out of the shower, warm, damp and clean, it isn't long before the white towels we wrapped ourselves in find their way to the floor as we find our way to the queen-sized bed. We spend such a long time kissing that Jackson must know my lips better than I know them myself, and when he pulls apart from them with a soft 'pop' and finds his way lower, I can feel how red and puffy they are.

His mouth finds my breast and he sucks on my nipple hard, which makes me whimper and my eyes fly open. I hold the back of his head and let my fingers wander down to his neck and ears as I get lost in what his tongue is doing to me. He moves and kisses me deftly in the center of my chest, right at the apex of my ribcage, and then lightly draws a line with his finger down between my ribs to my bellybutton. It makes the peach fuzz on my stomach stand on end and my hips writhe under the weight of him. I can feel my heartbeat between my legs, which, after so many times with him in bed, is not a new feeling for me anymore.

"Jackson, I'm ready," I whisper, dragging my fingertips down his back as far as I can reach. I can feel the goosebumps that rise up on his skin, and I love that I'm able to do that to him.

He kisses the underside of my jaw and then pets my hair back from my face. "Me, too," he says, and then lifts his head up. "Oh, shit. I just remembered. I don't have condoms. Do you…?"

I shake my head.

"Shit," he repeats.

I reach up and frame his face between my palms, gently scraping my fingers over his short facial hair. "It's okay," I assure him. "We don't need one."

"We don't?" he asks, bracing himself with his hands on the mattress on either side of my head. I shake my head again. "Okay," he says, and kisses me.

No matter how many times we sleep together, the feeling of him inside me has never become routine, and I don't think it ever will. My mouth drops open as he snaps his hips against mine, and I feel my lips pull up into a smile as he goes deeper and deeper. When it feels like he can't possibly go any further, my eyelids flutter shut and his name tumbles out of my mouth. He takes one of my legs and flexes it outward with my knee bent and I swear that I can see sparks when the feeling from this new angle takes over.

I force my eyes open to look at the expression on his face. He has half of his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes are half-lidded, cloudy with passion. As he gets closer, he dips his head down to the middle of my chest and rests his forehead there, undulating his pelvis against mine at just the right speed; not too fast but definitely not too slow, either.

When he comes, I feel it in his shoulders first. They get tense, hunched up by his ears, and he moans my name as his hips buck erratically against my own. He barely gives himself enough time to come down before he pulls out of me with a slick sound and connects his mouth with my core - making sure that my orgasm isn't long following his. And he knows just what to do to get me there; ever since our first time he's been an expert on what tactics elicit certain reactions out of me.

Now, he doesn't waste time. He presses his tongue against the spot that he knows will push me over the edge that I'm already very close to, and then holds onto my thighs as I ride it out. After it's over, I drop my weak legs to the mattress with a soft thump and lay there panting softly, staring at the ceiling.

"See, I was right," Jackson says. "So amazing." He crawls up from between my legs to join me at the head of the bed, and lets out a chuckle once he slumps down next to me.

"Shut up," I say, outstretching my bent arm to gently rap him on the chest with my knuckles. "Jackson?"

"Hmm?" he sleepily responds.

"There's only one pillow. And I'm cold."

He makes a rousing sound and then rustles around, standing up from the bed wearing absolutely nothing. I don't even try and resist staring at him as he pulls his underwear back on. "I don't mind sharing a pillow with you," he says, as he bends at the waist.

"I might be a bed hog, you don't know," I say, just coming to the realization that we've never actually _slept_ together before. Sure, there's been plenty of sex, but no actual sleeping. This will be something completely new.

"I'll get over it," he says, and picks up his dress shirt that had been tossed so haphazardly away. "Sit up."

"Why?"

"You're cold. You're not gonna wear your wedding dress to sleep in, are you?"

I giggle to myself and do as he asks, sitting up with my back hunched forward. He holds the shirt as I slip my arms into it, and then buttons me up as I put my silk underwear back on. Once it's buttoned up to the middle of my chest, he looks at me and chuckles. "You got dressed in the dark today, that's for sure," he says.

The sleeves hang down way past my hands and the hem hits around my mid-thigh, but admittedly it's very comfortable. "I'm not complaining," I say, then switch off the light. "Come to bed."

We crawl under the covers next to each other, and he presses his body up against my back and wraps his arm around my middle to keep me close. I gladly soak up his body heat and the way he smells, and as I close my eyes I wonder how any of this can possibly be real.

In the middle of the night, I'm awoken from a deep sleep by a small feeling on my back. As I become more conscious, I realize that the feeling is one of Jackson's fingers tracing nonsensical shapes on my skin under the billowy material of the shirt of his I'm wearing. I lay there for a long moment, faced away from him and smiling to myself, and then make my wakefulness known. I make a soft sound in the back of my throat and his hand flattens on the dip of my torso before my hip, and he whispers, "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up."

I roll over slowly onto my back and say, "You didn't." Even though he did, I don't mind. Not at all. "Can't sleep?" I ask.

"You were right. You are a pillow hog," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even as my eyes give in to the temptation of closing again.

"C'mere," I say groggily, extending my arms. I pull him close to me so his head is resting on my chest, right above my heartbeat, and he drapes one arm heavy over my belly. Even with my eyes closed, I wait until his breath comes easily and his body slackens against mine to fall back to sleep myself.

Before I open my eyes in the morning, I stay awake with them shut and take in the feeling of my surroundings. I can see the light shining gently in from the window on the far wall through my eyelids, can feel Jackson's arms wrapped around me and his head right next to mine on the pillow, I can even smell the faint scent of the motel-brand soap we used last night in the shower still sticking to our skin.

When I open my eyes, I see that he's still asleep. I shift my body a little so I can face him, and then stroke his head with one of my hands until his eyelashes flutter and his eyes open. The first thing he sees is me, and I love that. He makes a soft sound in the back of his throat and kisses my shoulder, then my neck a few times before pulling my body flush to his chest so I can settle against him.

"I like waking up next to you," I say quietly, running my fingertips down the arm of his that I can reach.

"I'm not complaining either," he says, then kisses the top of my messy, air-dried-wavy hair. He slips his arms around my waist and grabs two generous fistfuls of my butt, which makes me make a surprised, squeaky sound, then laugh into his mouth as he kisses me.

He rolls onto his side so he's resting on his elbow, and holds my head with one hand as the other is braced on the mattress on the other side of me, essentially trapping me in. As we kiss, I feel his fingers on the buttons of the shirt I have on, slowly undoing them so I become barer and barer.

"Jackson…" I say, popping my lips away from his. "No."

"What?" he asks, sounding confused. He glances at his watch on the nightstand. "We have plenty of time…"

"I know, I just…" I sigh and rest my hands over his shoulders. I don't miss the way that his free hand, having paused unbuttoning, is now resting overtop my left breast nonchalantly. "I didn't save myself totally. Obviously. But I'm only going to be having sex on my wedding day at _night_."

"Ugh, April…" he groans, deliberately thumbing my already-hardened nipple. I squirm away and hold his wrist captive in the middle of my belly, where he can't get at much. "But…"

"No," I say.

"But…"

"No," I say again, adamantly. He rolls his eyes lightly and skims his hands down my back until they're resting over the swell of my butt again. "And you have two seconds to get your hands away from my ass."

He chuckles, then groans, then flops over onto his back. "You kill me."

"It's only a few hours," I say.

"Of torture."

"Such drama," I tease him, and he gets up from the bed and walks over to the side I'm laying on. When he scoops me up with one arm under my shoulders and the other beneath my bent knees, I make a high-pitched sound of surprise. "What are you doing?!"

"Kicking you out," he says simply, unable to keep the grin off his face.

"Hey!" I say, smacking his chest. "Put me down. Jackson..." He opens the door and the bright sunlight of the morning comes pouring in. I squint my eyes to try and adjust, but it's blinding. "Jackson," I hiss, after he sets me down. "I don't have any pants on."

"Sad story," he says, still laughing. "I'm gonna pull the chain and everything."

I raise my eyebrows at him. "No one, and I mean no one, has seen me in my underwear except for you. Do you really want that to change?"

He freezes just like I knew he would. There's nothing like a blow to his ego; it'll make him do almost anything. It's his biggest weakness, and we both know it.

He swoops me back up in his arms and shuts the door behind us. "Damn you," he says, shaking his head. "Hate you."

"Can't believe you're marrying me in just…" I look at the time. "Five short hours, then."

He gives me a long, lasting look that I hope sears into my brain forever. When he finally speaks, he smiles and says, "I can."


End file.
